Technology is improving productivity and profitability. It hasn’t gone overseas because you can’t ship your soil to Mexico or China. And because our agriculture base is strong, other sectors are healthy too.rn
In those senses and more, agriculture is a model manufacturing business. But in one sense, it differs from any other: Farmers manufacture their product outdoors. That makes them vulnerable to threats no other manufacturing business faces: too much water, too little water, early frosts and late frosts, hail and tornadoes and more. And it’s why we need to make a national commitment to helping farmers protect themselves against risk and keep commodity prices high.
No achievement from my 12 years in the Senate makes me prouder than the bipartisan crop insurance reform I worked with Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas to enact. It wasn’t easy. We had to face down the opposition of, among others, the then-chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. But that program has transformed how farmers manage their risk. In particular, I insisted—against heavy opposition—that it include a mechanism for assuring revenue so farmers could protect themselves not just on the production side but on the price side too. Senator Roberts and I worked to ensure it was a market-oriented reform that would enable farmers to choose their own level of risk and do so through a private sector mechanism that provided a range of choices.
I believe a healthy, market-oriented crop insurance system—with subsidies for premiums set fairly—is the best way to empower farmers to manage their own risk. That’s why I will oppose any attempt by this or any other Administration to take over the delivery system for crop insurance. Similarly, I will fight to eliminate the direct payments that distort the market in favor of large, corporate farms over family farmers who are acting responsibly to manage their risk.
We must also work to keep commodity prices high by creating demand for value-added products. None of these is more important than ethanol. We need to keep markets for our commodities open with trade deals that treat farmers fairly. We need to maintain transparency in the market so speculators and large-scale operators don’t distort prices by buying and selling on both sides.
Farmers also understand the importance of conservation better than anyone. I worked to strengthen the Conservation Reserve Program in the Senate. Today, with commodity prices high and CRP payments lagging behind, it’s time to readjust it to provide incentives to preserve the integrity of fragile soil. And I’ll continue to support Natural Resource Districts as I have since I first called a Water Congress as Nebraska’s Governor in 1983.
A healthy agricultural sector is also the backbone of a strong rural economy. But there’s more we can do for rural communities. We need to make sure reimbursement rates are high enough to enable rural areas to maintain their medical infrastructure. We need to continue investing in basic and applied research as well as transportation, power, water and other infrastructure that makes rural life viable. Here as in other areas, I think it’s crucial to empower Nebraskans to write the law. We neither need nor can afford one-size-fits-all rural economic development programs that aren’t sensitive to the unique needs of each community. Instead, I’ll work to acquire federal support for locally tailored investments that reinvigorate rural communities.
Most important, I’ll continue fighting to keep the foundation of not just the rural economy but Nebraska’s economy—small-scale farms—healthy and strong by protecting what we accomplished in crop insurance reform and by fighting for the unique needs of producers and towns.
